New tea menu at L’Ortolan

Sample menu only, view current menus.

Whether it is sourcing the freshest lobsters for our menu, travelling to Portugal to meet with wine producers, we only select the best ingredients to offer our customers a unique combination of flavours.

Restaurant Reading Tea Menu L’Ortolan

So when Sylvain, our restaurant manager, was looking for a tea supplier to meet our exacting standards the choice was obvious. Henrietta Lovell, known as the Tea Lady and founder of Rare Tea Company travels around the world to source and supply the world’s best tea direct from farmers and their tea gardens.

“Proper tea is rather like fine wine, it has a terroir where a rich malty soil, rainfall and altitude all contribute to flavour, and it takes great skill to create. I travel far to find it,” she says.

Our tea menu will take your taste buds on a journey of discovery. Each tea has a unique flavour profile, ranging from a delicate, grassy white silver-tip tea made from spring buds grown in China’s Fujian mountains, to the deep flavour, soft citrus notes and rich sweetness of the Cloud Tea from India.

Restaurant Reading Rare Tea Experience Berkshire

And you don’t even have to travel too far to find a wonderfully bright and subtle tea. One of the teas on our menu, the Cornish Earl Grey is grown within a walled garden at Tregothnan in Cornwall. Hand-made and carefully hand-scented with real bergamot oil. It has been blended with a top quality Assam.

The Tregothnan estate also produces one of the very last English mints in production, used in our peppermint infusion. Head gardener Jonathan Jones selects cultivars best adapted to the unique Cornish microclimate where growing conditions are ideal. This mint has a unique depth of flavour and is uncommonly strong.
So on your next visit, ask your waiter about our tea menu to discover the hidden treasures on offer.